Standing orders

A standing order is a customer's regular weekly pattern: the same goods, on the same days, every week, until further notice. "Riverside Grocery takes 60 sourdough every Monday, Wednesday and Friday." You write it down once. From then on, every production plan you build already knows that on a Wednesday the bakery owes Riverside 60 loaves, without anyone typing an order that morning.

Why standing orders exist

Most of a bakery's or caterer's daily volume is not new orders; it is the same customers taking the same thing week after week. Without standing orders, someone has to either:

re-enter those customers' orders every day as sales orders, which is slow and the first thing to be forgotten on a busy morning, or
keep the pattern in the head baker's head, which works until the head baker is on leave.

A standing order puts that pattern in the system where the production plan can read it. The plan adds the standing quantities for the day to the one-off sales orders and the shelf stock you want for walk-ins, takes off what is already baked, and turns the rest into whole recipe batches. The regular customers are never missed, and nobody has to remember them.

When you would use one

A wholesale bread route. Shops, cafés and restaurants that take bread or pastries on fixed days. One standing order per customer per item; the van is the delivering department, so the plan and the pick list can be grouped by route.
A school or office canteen contract. 200 rolls every weekday during term. Set the start and end date to the term; the order stops itself at the end of term and starts again when you set the next one.
A hotel or restaurant breakfast supply. Croissants and muffins every morning, more at the weekend. Different quantities per weekday are normal; Saturday and Sunday can be higher than Monday.
A subscription box or a weekly cake club. The customer pays for a regular delivery; the standing order makes sure it is baked.
Catering retainers. A company that takes a sandwich platter every Friday for its staff meeting.

When a standing order is the wrong tool

A one-off order (a wedding cake, a party platter, a single large bread order for an event) is a sales order with a required date. The plan picks those up too.
Stock you want on the shelf for walk-in customers is entered on the plan itself as shelf stock, not as a standing order, because it is not owed to anyone.
A customer who orders often but not on a pattern ("usually Fridays, sometimes Thursdays, sometimes nothing") is better served by a sales order each time. A standing order would bake goods on days nobody collects them.

What a standing order is not

A standing order is not an invoice or a sales order. It never posts to stock or to the books, it does not reserve stock, and it does not bill anyone. It only tells the production plan what to bake. When the goods go out, you still record the sale the normal way (an invoice, a POS sale or a sales order delivered), and that is what charges the customer.

Think of it as the baker's weekly order book, not the accounts.

Before you start

The customer must exist under Sales → Customers.
The item must exist under Products & Services. If the customer takes the goods in a pack (a tray, a crate), make sure the item has that pack set up, so you can count in trays rather than in single rolls.
If a van or a route delivers the order, create that van as a department under Setup → Departments so you can pick it as the delivering department. This is also what lets the pick list be printed per van.
For the plan to turn the demand into batches, the item needs a production recipe. Without one the plan still shows the demand, but marks it No recipe and leaves it to be made by hand.

Steps

Open Bakery & Catering → Standing orders and click New standing order.
Pick the customer and the item.
If the quantity is counted in packs, pick the pack (for example Tray of 12). Leave it blank to count in single units.
Enter the quantity for each weekday. Leave a day at 0 when nothing is taken that day. The quantities can differ from day to day: 40 on weekdays and 70 on Saturday is a normal pattern.
Set the start date. Leave the end date blank for an open-ended order, or set it when the arrangement finishes (a school term, a contract).
Optionally pick the delivering department (the van or route).
Add a note if there is something the bakers or the driver should know ("sliced", "deliver before 7 am", "leave at the side door").
Click Save. The order shows in the list with its weekday quantities.

To pause an order without deleting it (the café closes for two weeks), open it and untick Active. Tick it again to resume. To change a quantity permanently, edit the order; the change applies from the next plan you build.

How the plan uses it

When you build the production plan for a date, every standing order that is active, whose date range includes that date, and that has a quantity on that weekday, adds its quantity to that item's demand. Pack quantities are converted to single units using the pack size. On the plan, open an item's row to see exactly which standing orders are in its demand, next to the sales orders and shelf stock for the same item.

Because the plan is built per day, a change to a standing order never rewrites history: last week's plans stay as they were, and the new pattern shows from the next build.

Tips

One row per item. A customer who takes bread and cakes has two standing orders. That keeps each row simple and lets you pause or end one without touching the other.
Use the end date for anything with a known finish. A term, a contract, a seasonal arrangement. It is far more reliable than remembering to deactivate it.
Group by van. Setting the delivering department on every order for a route lets the pick list and production sheet be grouped per van, which is how the loading bay works.
Review the list monthly. Use the Only active filter and the search box to find a customer's orders quickly. Customers drift; a pattern that was right in January may be wrong by June.
The end date is inclusive. An order ending on the 30th still counts on the 30th.

Common problems

"Enter a quantity on at least one weekday" → every weekday is 0. Put a quantity on at least one day.
"The pack does not belong to the chosen item" → you changed the item after picking a pack. Pick the pack again.
The order does not appear in tomorrow's plan → check that it is active, that tomorrow is on or after the start date and on or before the end date, and that the quantity for tomorrow's weekday is more than 0.
The plan shows the demand but no batches for it → the item has no production recipe. Give it one under Manufacturing → Recipes and rebuild the plan.
The customer was never invoiced → a standing order does not bill. Make sure the delivery is recorded as a sale (invoice, POS sale or delivered sales order) when the goods go out.
The menu is missing → standing orders are part of the Bakery & Catering edition and need the Sales transactions right. Ask your administrator.